How To Master Your Personal Brand

Rob Napoli

Rise Up Coaching

Rob is the Host of The Bear Necessities of Entrepreneurship Podcast and is an entrepreneur, speaker, and author of ‘The Social Soul’. His journey has taken him from the Midwest to New York City by way of Milan, Italy where he got a Masters's, scaled a global startup, and coached professional American Football. He is currently the Founder of Rise Up Coaching, and Co-Founder and Board Member of Hapday Group.  Rob is a continuous learner who creates engaging keynotes, programs, workshops, and curriculum and is on a mission to find the best whiskey bar in Manhattan.

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www.marlanasemenza.com

Audio: Ariza Music Productions

Transcript: Vision In Word

Marlana: Rob Napoli of Rise Up coaching is a continuous learner who is on a mission to find the best Whiskey Bar in Manhattan. He is the host of the bare necessities of entrepreneurship podcast, and as an entrepreneur, speaker, and the author of the social soul. Welcome, Rob.

Rob: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Marlana: So, we're gonna talk today about mastering our personal brand. So, I'm just gonna let you have the floor and dive into it. How do we do it?

Rob: That is a great question. There's a quite a few different ways to do it. Right. And I think it really depends on let's first define what like your personal professional brand is right? And that is that many of us live with kind of two sides of our brand, meaning we have the personal touches, a lot of times like Facebook, Instagram, Tick Tok, Snapchat, whatever, then we have a professional, which is usually just like LinkedIn, right. And we try to keep these things separated for a long time, that was a big goal. But now in a hyper connected digital age, it's no longer about one or the other, and some people can, and some people do. But for most without they're really become a blended thing. And it's because we want to be treated like humans, both personally and professionally. Right, especially in sales and marketing, things like that. And so how do we do that? And it's kind of, you know, it's why I call it the social saw in the book is thinking about, how do we be authentically us online. And so that's where the idea of a personal professional kind of tied together and starting Yeah, you know, you may throw pictures of your kids on Facebook showing off, you know, kids, but that's not how you wanna throw on LinkedIn, maybe you could, if you want to, it's nothing wrong instead. But you might have LinkedIn, it's like more about your professional journey and failures in wins and losses in the workplace versus Facebook at home, you can have that kind of delineation. But understand that those lessons can carry over, it's some of the stuff that you learn at home, you can share here, it doesn't necessarily be oh, this is one thing. And this is the other and a completely separate, I can't crossover content.

Marlana: So that's the thing, too. Let me just ask you this, don't you think to that, because the world is so social, and we do have all these different platforms that it's important to show up consistently on each platform? So, people aren't getting Okay, on LinkedIn, she appears this way. And on Facebook, she appears completely different. there's got to be some kind of a…

Rob: Yeah, I mean, that comes to the fact that like, if you go into a car meeting, and you're not moving the person you're talking with and meeting with, like, who are you? And what are you doing? Right, so first? Yeah, I mean, there's got to be some consistency. You know, consistency is relative, not everyone needs to post daily, not everyone is supposed to weekly and monthly, but you can't just have a profile, and never posts and back. Why bother LinkedIn, you know, there's got to be something there. And it's the whole idea of sales nowadays to be human. Right, and salespeople, before they get on the phone with you, they're gonna know not just what you do professionally, they're gonna know you personally. And if you have kids, if you'd like to go golfing unless you have every one of your profiles locked. And then I'd say how many people do we know a comment? And I'll go look and see if I know somebody like, hey, what can you tell me about, you know, Marlana? What can you tell me about Rob, what can you tell me about Rachel, what can you tell her about Jane’s? And so, I tagged on a call if you want to know something about you, right. And so that's why it's important to have consistency across channels. That's why it's important to show up. And, and you know, you don't have to, I'm really against taking the same piece of content and blasting out across all the channels, I think you need to different channels have different tones of voice that you want to have. So, you kind of want to tailor taking the same image or video, but the way you present it, and the text that goes along with it should not be copy, paste, copy, paste, because I don't follow Rob. If I follow him on Instagram, why would I follow him on Twitter? Right? And if you want them to follow your different platforms, then you want to make sure that your platforms are a little bit different.

Marlana: Yeah, that makes sense. And is it more about like you said before, it's not about necessarily showing up every day, but I feel like we do have to be consistent and show up in you know, because the people that seem to be showing up at least are the ones that are getting the attention. Maybe they're not the best at what they do, or but there, they're there. So yeah,

Rob: I mean, it's such a great point, I want to say since I know there's stuff there, yeah, no, it's this like cuz there is something to be said that they're always there. But why are you there? What is the reason for being there? I mean, I have a bunch of, you know, I'm like an early adopter of new platforms. But Marco Polo came out, boom, Snapchat, but Instagram hashtag. I was like, people made fun of me, the hashtag King. He'll made fun of me for documenting. You know what time before I moved off to Italy as kind of playing my final year of football and I wanted to move positions to play one last year, a different position. So, I dropped 45 pounds. For that season, I document that whole journey. I was like, Oh, you're the guy taking this picks the gym. I'm like, Yeah, but it's for a reason. It's accountability. It's both for myself and for others. And you I think being there's one thing, but why are you there, you know, just to have elected because everyone says you should have it versus, I'm there. I've put some thought into my profile. I've shared a little bit. I've engaged a little bit. Maybe it's once a blue moon. But I'm there I show up. Right. And the best example, I can use it this right clubhouse. And even in my book, I read about clubhouse, and I already was gonna rip that out because I think clubhouse is already dead. And that's how fast and I authored this book in the summer. Like I finished the book in the summer of this year. I'm sorry, 2021, so seven months ago. But clubhouse almost got broken. When Elon Musk jumped in a room and did a thing. And clubhouse rooms only handled 20,000. It was crazy. They have a room of 20,000 people. It's just a whole lot. And the fact that people are actually like beating themselves and like, you know, I mean, granted when I'm on stage, but the whole thing and you think about it, why? For whatever anyone thinks about Elon Musk, why are people like Elon Musk, or Dave Portnoy, the CEO of Barstool Sports? That CEO anymore President right, America and our genius, you know, but why are they so popular? It's because they show up on social and they talk to generations, versus the VP or CEO of Johnson and Johnson, no one knows about gravity, they might not need to be there. But why is Elon Musk there? Why does he do it, she doesn't need to be there. He does it because he knows if he if he's there, Gary Vaynerchuk. Same thing, if he's there, he creates brand ambassadors and lifetime and earns longer lifetime value of customers by catching them at 15 1617 where they come and work for you because the best invest talent, or they buy a Tesla. You're creating longer lifetime value, brand engagement, brand awareness and brand loyalty at a much earlier space in place. And so many people missing out. The other side of this, though, is that we don't need more freaking influencers, right? Don't go on and try being an influencer, you gotta go on and be authentic. And if that's showing up once a month, and that's showing up once a month, bacteria are no point to bring this full circle, you have to be there and you have to know why you're there. And you have to know why you're there to engage. And in what way do you want to engage these places? It's a waste of time and space, and a waste of your energy.

Marlana: Agreed? And you know, a friend of mine had said once What do you want to be an influencer or a person of influence because there's a big difference.

Rob: You'll never believe this. That file just randomly showed back up on my desktop, and it's now downloading. And it's a fairly big file. And so, I just paused it and literally have no idea. I haven't touched anything. I've been talking to you for the last 10 minutes. That file just stops. It started downloading and it just stuck the bandwidth. So, I apologize. I think we're back to stable. It's the people that were talking in your ears telling you don't worry about it. I got your file. It's fan just crazy. So 5g is for that quick little crazy waiting, so it should be good. Everything sized again. Okay. So, let's like sweating right now. For the audience I don't know Okay guys out there right before this call, I thought I lost the file was freaking out came to the call two minutes late. I was like, hey, I'll be fine. Oh, you'll figure it out. Cool. So, I shut everything off focus on that conversation in the middle of the conversation the file pops back up and starts downloading, haven't touched anything, haven't done anything in the last segments other than talk to y'all and I was sweating again. I feel bad in the middle of this, all this craziness but that is you know that is serendipity that is karma that is letting things go and letting you know letting go of things you can't control, which is a big lesson around building your personal and professional brand. And driving things across social being authentically you is that you can't control the biggest fear, is that what other people are going to say and think you can't control that. You can control what you post, you can control hire, respond, you know, I talk, attitude and effort all the time. I think there's John Barrows. Now it's like, eat this new thing. It's effort, attitude. And a Kenworth T was, but you know, anyways, I was talking about attitude, effort, by attitude and effort. And it's the idea behind and trolling is that if you have a great attitude, and you give great effort, good things can happen. When you do that, you destroy both things, you control your response as well, not only to control what others do, but you control how you respond. So that's taking that breath, it's having the attitude to be positive, and the effort to take a breath when you're mad, step back and say, Hey, okay, and then you figure out how to respond, oh, the narrative backwards or back to the others. So

Marlana: let me ask you this, because you touched on something that I always tell people, and it said, we can't control what other people think of us. However, we can control, we can steer the conversation. So how, in your opinion, do you steer the conversation when you're building a brand?

Rob: You know, I was (whose podcast, was it?) So, I'm gonna answer your question. But I had a weird realization yesterday. Pulled up my Spotify to listen to music for the first time in a while, and I put on like a new country station. And I realized I hadn't heard any of the songs or playing. And I've realized I've been so this is not to sound pretentious, but I've been so consumed by consuming content for the last four months, that what I have my headphones and I'm listening to a podcast. Like I literally today, I'm still two weeks behind, but I'm almost caught up like on all the podcasts that I have and listen to and follow and almost cut up and like, I just consistently consume content in that music. And I was also a Casio Dad, I can't remember whose it was, but he was talking about, you know, the whole phenomena that everyone wants to see succeeding to succeed. Once their perception of you is that you're successful, they start wanting to tear you down, because they want to be you. Right, so you can't so to your point of not controlling how to think how to control that narrative is, you're not going to because they're gonna either be with you or against you. And it's tough, because if you want to really create yourself as a person of influence, you have to stand for something. And the minute you stand for something, you will isolate someone, just by the nature of it. And we fear more about those who we isolate, than we do that those that buy in. So, if you want to control, have that narrative, post content that's meaningful to you. Post what you feel is authentic and valuable and drives value into others. And that's all you do. Because if people are going to career disagree. What most people don't do though, is they don't lean into the uncomfortableness of the disagreement. Hey, great point. Would you mind having a conversation for five minutes about that further? Learn? Don't be so bullheaded that, well I'm right, you're wrong or I'm the influencer and you're not. Because Zig Ziglar and I love this quote. I people. Most people don't laugh about it. I've done this multiple times. So, people do but what is an expert? X former spurt waterspout. You know, you're somebody who talks about spreading out information in the past. Right? If you really want to be a person of influence, you need to start being an expert. Being a forward thinker, meaning you're talking about things to come you're taking chances on saying hey, I think this might happen based on bias. Experience of 20 years this way, I think the next big thing is this, I think is going to happen. And for many of us, I don't want that. We're too afraid to put our names out there. If you want to control that conversation, the only thing you can do is just post meaningful and valuable content that you feel as you and think, let it ride.

Marlana: Let me ask you this, do you think in there with what you just said, that when you start to put yourself out there, and you start to have people follow you and things like that, and you start to stand for something, if somebody challenges that in a way, or comes up and has something to say the opposite, or questions you or anything like that? How much of that do you think, is a little imposter syndrome coming up that? Oh, well, if they challenged me, and I either don't have the answer, or if I, you know, shift my position at all, then people are gonna think that I'm not what I was.

Rob: Oh, God! Apostasy hits everybody. You mean, I talked about in my book, I talk all the time, I had my episode, last episode a year at my twin brothers talking about it and how, you know, I continue to deal with it. In the first episode of this show, I talk a little bit high deal syndrome. I still deal with it those days, Mike. Yeah, I meant to be part of this conversation is like, How the hell am I in this conversation? Why am I lucky enough to be in this room? As a day's like, Wait, is everything I was telling a lie? It did everything I just right, wrong. You're gonna go through that. And one of the biggest things I can say, when people challenge you is you have to look at your motivation, right? There are two types of motivation, internal and external. We look at that as a hitbox for motivation. And we look at engagement as extra motivation to keep posting more and admitted that starts are negative that to Windows the five extra motivation, extra motivation is only it's limited. It's meant to spark an internal fire. But if that internal fire, the internal motivation is not there, nothing will ever carry. And so, you know, from an imposter syndrome standpoint, you have to kind of look at that and that. Okay, cool. This is again, I can control how I respond. I don't know the answer to this. Oh, what the hell do you have at your disposal? Google? can go find out the answer. You can also say, hey, great point. We'd love to discuss it. Let me come back to you. Guess what, it's a comment. You don't have to respond right away. You can take 24 hours go do your due diligence and come back to or Hey, great point. XYZ or hey, I send out love to discuss the further so great point too long to put in a comment thread, we'll have to maybe have a conversation. There are all kinds of ways you can circle back to that. The key here is you don't have to know everything. It is absolutely okay if you're not trying to

Marlana: Yeah. And I think we have to stop taking everything as an offence if somebody questions us it's not an offence or and I think to so many times we listen with the intent to respond and not to hear what they're actually saying.

Rob: That is huge. Like that right there's a huge nugget right listen with the intent to hear band Yeah. Right versus listening tend to respond What's your right like that kind of knock you back for a second because I was already thinking about why our response versus like you're gonna kind of that's a great there's something so poignant that is, you know, you get to just hear and that when you post something out to the world, you gotta hear the world. In fact, if you don't know where to start and Cray start paying engaged In fact, the best thing to do to be a person of influence is not to create content to engage with content. Right, because engaging you're allowed to ask questions, delve deeper conversations, be more of a spark to a flame that's going like it's you actually, you know, it's like you're blowing oxygen onto a flame of things that are happening. You don't have to be another you don't have to push our time some people don't want to it's cool don't want to do videos cool down, go engage on 10 posts a day spark conversation, and then see who else is commenting on it. That's what people don't do so they can't believe salespeople don't do enough, but I see a lot of sales and fun to talk about this. So, this is nothing new but say you posted something great, and I commented “Hey balls law love this of that.” I'm gonna go through and look at all those people are commenting and seeing if people are you know, I'm throwing out those says Hey, Greg posts is cool. But I'm looking at who's commenting, you know, meaningfulness I might go look at who likes it and see, even like my ICP, average shout, hey, great couple, you know, great comments on the post, you know, I had similar feelings, would love to have a chat, but we put like, what better way to start organic conversations, then use the fact that you're engaging in other content to do that and make that full circle, right. So, you don't even have to create content at all, to become kind of a thought leader to build your personal brand. You don't, you don't have to even you could create no content for a month and gain 1000 followers just by engaging with the right ecosystems and places.

Marlana: You know, and with that, I think that's a great segue into I know, something that you talked about that's building a value-added network. So, dive into that a little bit and tell us what that is and how we do that.

Rob: So, there's 100 different way, there's 100 different ways, I think, the big thing for me, is thinking about, who do you want in your network or why? Right? So, my networks, we have little things that people I want to learn from people that are friends, and I work with family, obviously. And then people that I want to work with, right, that are my clients. And that is where most of us tend to fail. As is really driving that. And that's where if you want to build that kind of value out of network, like forget the personal brands said, that Gonzalez whole thing, that's cool. I think what you are really when and that could be 100, or 1000 is or 5000, it's building an island network is that when you go through your feed on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, you're seeing content that you actually care about. And yeah, that couldn't be you know, that your brother's having a baby and checking it like that's part of that right, but erasing toxicity, erasing things that are just mindless consumption of people doing things that are funny, you know, in training, you need that outlet. So, I'm not saying take all that out and be, you know, it's kind of like, when someone tells you that you see those infographics, but how to be successful, like, stop doing that thing, stop playing video games, like, boom, need those in your life, don't take out things that bring you joy. But know when it becomes mindless consumption, and you need to have that filter. And so, when you believe that value added network, and you're looking at who those are, like search for people, and don't just search for people, because they're the CEO of a company search for, you know, if you're actually PHTLS search for CEOs that are active on LinkedIn, they use that are engaging in conversation, I see that engaging on Instagram, right? I don't follow fire like so these big actors and stuff. And everyone follows him, and I like, I'll follow them. If they engage with the community. If I see them actually commenting, it's posting back then I'll follow them. I was just posting wanting people that live here just for your personal brand to be an influencer in the space. But cool, I can look up on E on Google you whatever I want. If something happens, I'm not following your Instagram page. That's a waste of time for me. Right? So, when you're building this, like go look for those that are active. LinkedIn actually tells you; it gives you all the activity in the last 90 days. If you go and they have no activity, there's no activity section is not on the profile. So why would you even waste your time trying to reach out to them so you can click Get a KPI number. So, you can have one more person that's a connection. So, before I even start creating, like, think about who's in your network, and then purge it, purge your network, I went through deleted like 2000 people, because they weren't the right fit for me because I was a recruiter, before I did the setup. Well, it's like I had all these people that wanted something from me when I was posting my jobs. Now I no longer question my jobs, the PAC boy rivals them. And then I have Pack file Bible to me. Get them out of your network, and leverage that so that you have a fresh look. Because the more people you have, that are not engaging, the less reach you have, if you have to be a person of influence. It also means you're going to see less of the stuff that actually could be beneficial to you because you have all this other noise in front of it. Understand that being a person of influence building a brand or just building a value add a network is all about taking care of that. It's not about having a big network. It's about having an engaged network that you take care of.

Marlana: Yeah, it's interesting that you just brought up that point because I think that's where some people get nervous. Oh my gosh, I'm going to delete 2000 people and you know, then it's going to look Like I don't have as many connections, followers, or blah, blah, blah. And but the thing is you want the right people and then serve those people. So, it's better to serve 10 that are your people and that are engaged and 10,000 Holly for nothing.

Rob: I'd rather have 100 brand loyalists and 1000 brand exciters right, if people are like, oh, cool, I'll follow you. I want those loyalists. I want those people that are there and are bought in. And because the society has screwed up so much that it's about how many people and I went, when I jobs, we hired as influencers to run a campaign. And his across all those platforms, I think his reach was 10 million. And we were we were kind of starstruck by getting this guy to do this. And the cost, you know, we I bought it on it and was able to get the cost for our post. And he went with that and, and it's got this big time in front of this thing, did the thing. If we didn't have a single subsidy, Chad, I went back and looked at it. And then I decided, I decided to go one step deeper. I went to all his platforms, and I started looking to engaged. And I started realizing it was actually engaging the types of comments he was getting, I realized that his network was over inflated, with a lot of followers with very low engagement and engagement that the influencer had was not our target market. Yeah, that was a big swing of the mess. Right. And so, we were so enamored that it's about the amount of people that follow us versus having a truly dedicated orc. And I don't have I mean, I have 1000 on like them, but only 1000 Something in Instagram, and there's a bigger and whatever pretty good group on Instagram, and it's starting to grow. In fact, what's funny is I've travelled a lot, I have a lot of friends, like, I deleted everyone that was not an ICP, and that friends or family and I had like 850 friends and family because I've travelled, I've coached to play football. So, because that's kind of like shoot, okay, so again, know that my number is 1200. I know that I have right now it's about 600 friends and family and 600 are my like, ICP, right? This script, like, I know, my Instagram weight is, right. So, you have to think about those things. And like that's why it's so important. Like, I give very real specific examples, because it's really easy to have fluff and overthink it versus who the actually cares if people are engaging, and I feel good about what I'm posting. That's all that should matter.

Marlana: Okay, let me ask you this. Let's say your Instagram is split between your ideal client and friends and family. So, when you post Who are you posting for?

Rob: Good question! Both mean different times, right? All my rules are really for the ICP. I usually try to do like one family posts a week that's more geared towards like, but see Instagram is my place that shows Rob as Rob and Rob as speaker. Right? It's it is a fair is the meshing point. Facebook is all friends and family. LinkedIn is all business. Instagram is my mesh point. So, when I post, you know, and I share a family stuff in life events on LinkedIn to an extent, right? Because I want people to see the good and the bad, I talk about failures and all these things. But Instagram is a channel that truly mesh meshes and so I split it into like the reels are dedicated towards the ICP. You know, one post per week is March my family. I do stories and it's a little bit of both. Sometimes it's I call stuff I'm doing a man I live in New York, and I get to have some pretty cool experiences walking around and what you see on the subway and sometimes it's an event I'm at or travelling or it's back home on the farm like I show a little bit of all of it. So, if you want to know the one platform to follow Rob on to see the full picture. It's Instagram, and that's not to say my biggest channel, right? But that's because that's the channel I choose to have both lenses there. And so, when I post I know I want to post too and you know very strategic on when I post those things to do who and what day says Come out and other stuff to maximize engagement, the Atmos.

Marlana: Do you think that by doing that, by posting the professional and the personal that actually gives us the most well-rounded brand? 

Rob: Yes. And that's why I say favorite channel. Email is my biggest LinkedIn drivers. I love LinkedIn. I love my LinkedIn family. I have an amazing network on LinkedIn. And I have been so thankful for the number of opportunities that I've found developed and created because of with dance. But in Scratch my pianos channel because it is all of me. And this is where I talk about mastering my personal professional. You don't have to have it all on, you know, it doesn't have to be on all the different platforms, right? Facebook is off and my friends, Instagram is the mesh point, LinkedIn is the more personal you can have different tons of opioids, but they're all Rob, they're all authentically me. None of it is a fake version of me. It's just which what I want to show you at what time to leverage that

Marlana: into that particular platform.

Rob: Exactly. Because each platform has its own unique, you know, vibe and feel. And, you know, I said something earlier about, you know, doesn't matter as long as you know, people are engaging, and you feel good about the content you're posting. If there's people out there that are saying, you know that people come to me and we talk about this now, Rob, I do want to be a person of influence slash influencer. And like, cool. Well, in that case, the only number you should care about is reach. Right when you post a reel or you're getting 200 500. Is it growing? How many impressions did you get on your LinkedIn post? Cool. Your LinkedIn post has 10 engagements, but it was seen over 4000 times. That's amazing. That's pretty start we're so quick to say, well, I don't have 100 likes, 100 comments who the cares if you're early and you're growing. Start with impressions. First are people seeing and as time goes, you should see that the number of people seeing it go up. As that number goes up. The number of likes you saw going up and the number Comments are circling up. If people see your stuff, and your likes and comments do not continue to grow, there's two things that are an issue, they should be looking at. One, the content is not resonating, especially with your current following. So, you might need to look at, okay, do I need to change my content, or to you have the right content for the wrong network, and you need to do some purging on your network. So, if you are, so I just want to put that out there. Because that's usually where people challenge me on. Right? It's well if that's what I want. Cool. You can also go to tick tock, and you can see everyone out there and tick tock and Instagram, we'll say, here's how you can make seven figures in 30 days and grow your account from one to 250. Cool, do all the trends and dances. And then when you try to start talking about the *** you really care about, it's gonna be ignored, because you've built a network on***. And now you're trying to talk real *** doesn't work. So, I just want to take that step back. And if you want to create like an influencer lifestyle, first to influence both profile does the match issues we still can't early. And that's why you should be judging yourself on not exactly likes and comments. Because you get into the game of likes and comments, then you're putting yourself into a very negative dark place, that it's just not going to be good for your mental health, and you'll burn out tomorrow. And when you create content that you're not passionate about, you'll eventually burn out because it gets exhausting. Like I don't ever have an issue. Creating content, mostly sometimes just comes out of time, but I have enough content to talk about. I love doing it. Because there's more to say and therefore to talk about because it's what I'm passionate about. And sometimes makes change. Sometimes I'm like, Hey, I said this. But now it's really this. So, you need to really understand to come, there's a lot of people out there that the job isn't their passion. Their job feeds their passions. And this is why that personal professional and leading into the profile. It's important. I have a couple of friends who work for a large financial institution. I don't love what I do every day. But I do go in the office. It's good work environment, I make good money. And it's a good schedule and allows me to do what I really love, which is x. How would I do I probably look great. Your social credit personal profile should be x the thing that you love, your personal to talk a little about that because we talk about how your job feeds other passions. And that's how you tie it together. You don't have to, oh, just because you're an underwriter at a financial institution, like what are you talking about? Oh, the process that I do, I don't worry no. Now one thing I love about working as an underwriter and seeing how this works on the back end I is gotten to watch people buy homes, their dreams. And while doing that I actually get to create a career that allows me to go travel. And I could do it from anywhere and so that I like this XYZ and so this becomes the bigger thing you talk about, you could talk about how your job position that you're underwriting and underwriting and trying to create a following on you know, LinkedIn or Instagram, right, but you could talk about how your job as an underwriter feeds you and feed your passion to be a real estate investor or travel the world and look at architecture for starting a blog about homes and home decor and interior design. All these different things, right. Sorry, tangent there, but no, no. And that's so important. It's the, the blending of us are the different aspects of who we are. It's so important. And I want to point this out because we were gonna grab you know, when I wrote this, they're supposed to be 60,000 words, it's 2999 pages. It's an hour and a half. Read if you're decent reader, probably 233. We're slow, for really fast, maybe an hour. And you know, out there, there are tons of playbooks. And here's how to go from zero to whatever, and 90 days. I don't know if I can pass on this. But the first line of this book is the only time I do this, but I said this is not a playbook. You're looking to get from zero to 1 million followers. This is not it. You're looking to drive authentic engagement, creative value out of network and drive real relationships that lead to growth, opportunity, and partnerships. This is the book for you. Each one of us out there has an impressive journey, because it is ours. Only we walk it and if you want to maximize your personal professional brand and create a value-added network, it's not about having the biggest Just or being an influencer or being at that later. It's about when you go on there. Do you know why you're there? Do you have an engaged community that you can interact with? And are you doing things to create real relationships? There are people that are my board of advisors that I've never met in person, which are some of the closest people to me that I've met during the pandemic. Because of this. There are jobs and people that I've worked with, and, you know, clients that I've worked with, that I've met, that I've never met, that I've worked with that are from all over the world, because of social work, maybe because they saw content, I got introduced, a lack what they saw, they wanted to work with me, we never had a chance to meet because travel was shut down. It didn't matter. Right. That's what building a personal brand, going back to network, and mastering it with authenticity, and originality is all about. And I wrote this book, specifically, and I talk about things like this specifically, everyone's like, Well, Rob, I want like, concrete step 1, 2, 3. I was like, go find a playbook. That's the one that playbook will work for you. But you know, those folks do they only work for like a third of the people, because a third of them aren't committed. I thought everyone had the wrong types of journeys for that playbook. And I got a third of them are like the committed and the right kind of ICPR that playbooks there is no, there's 100 million ways to grow a following. There's 100 million ways to do these things. But there's only one way to do it, authentically you and that's the way that you want to do it, the way that you can create it to grow a business. So, the people that I know that most successful that have 510 $15 million books of business aren't thought leaders. They're not the ones that you see posting with 1000 likes and 500 comments, they might post and get 50. But there they are network; they engage a lot. They're the ones that are like always seeing commenting, and they have great networks, and they've spent time curating that so well, that things happen. That's the books about, that's why I talk like the way I do in this frame of what I feel like it means to build your network and why there's so many different examples and the ways to think about it. And no one way is right for anybody.

Marlana: And we'll make sure that the link to social Sol is in the show notes too. So, everybody can go out and get a copy of it,

Rob: please! That's hugely appreciate that.

Marlana: So, Rob, with that, I just have four final questions for you. First one, what's the best piece of advice you're ever given?

Rob: Show up, and honor commitments. Big lessons, I recently just lost my grandpa. And one of the things I remember that he kind of taught was that you need to honor commits that you say, and to show up, and that has always stuck with me. And that if I have something that I need to have done, I'm going to do it when I figure it out. If I say my doing let it figure it out. It's really easy to be like, Oh, I forgot or oh, this or that. And there's been times in my life that I've lost that and it's as well as things that when I started my business, I realized that you have to show up, they show up for people and your honor tremendously do your say you're gonna do it makes a huge difference in life and in business. So, I think that's just a very real for like a lot of reasons. In fact, that we just recently lost him. So yeah, I think that one has just been on my mind a lot recently.

Marlana: Share with us one thing on your bucket list.

Rob: We were just talking about this the other day. I just want to say honestly, I'll do a personal and professional bucket list. Okay. Because my professional bucket list feeds the personal one. I started a podcast called The Bare Necessities of Entrepreneurship with the idea that I want to interview somebody from every state in the US and every country in the world. Entrepreneurship comes from everywhere, which has led me to, I think it's very ambitious. So, visit every country in the world, but I want to visit every continent, and not just visit right? And I talk about this all the time. I have the opportunity to live for two years in Italy, travelled to 55 cities in 13 countries. What I realized is there's difference between going on vacation and immersing yourself and whenever we'd go out Holiday, we try not to get a hotel unless we have to. We get an Airbnb, we research areas of the city, the first thing we do is we do a tour guide, a free tour and walking tour. Those are the first things we do when we get to a new city. And then we ask that you're okay, we're here for three days for three local restaurants, three bars, and three things we should do that most people won't do. Like don't give me the frigging, you know, Empire State Building Top of the Rock like New York, I know those things are three things I don't know about. And so, I want to do and that's a big thing on my bucket list. And that's also productive for you out there when you travel. Get those free walking tours and ask those three questions and watch how much more fun you have on vacations.

Marlana: I'm going to keep that in mind. Okay, when the toy companies finally get around to making an action figure of you what to accessories will it come with?

Rob: a man bun and a beard. I feel I'll be like, you know, MacGyver Right? Like it's the man bun that comes out and has like a screwdriver and everything so it's like a toy like we're gonna teach our kids how to be more hands on. And I joke with the beard thing, but I think the other thing would be I stopped I think it'd be kind of like a motivational like, you know, it's like you know, the Buzz Lightyear type thing but with actually like motivational weird sayings. So, you have like the motivation and like the MacGyver thing coming out of the band van. That'd be the two accessories.

Marlana: And the last one how does people find you?

Rob: Yeah, I'll give you the links. I have a beacons page beacons dot page backslash five now played that has access to everything. Find all the platforms come on all the socials all the digits, the details, LinkedIn, it's a backslash Rob nap just put in Rob Napoli yellow picture, man, Bondi can't miss it. And then I said it's gonna be my favorite. So, rise underscore up that Rob nap. But you'll have all that for the show notes. And I always say, if you hear this and you have a critical issue, I want to say something. Drop me a line. Let me know you heard me on the show. And, you know, I'm always here to chat about it. Like I, I don't, I'm serious. When I say hey, reach out to me connect, like, I'm going to say hello back. I'm going to engage with you. And you know, always happy to, to answer further questions and, and chat with anyone who, as far as your audience, I really appreciate, you know, your audience who's sticking out to this by now for listening to me, you know, go on random tangents, and talk with you here today. It's really fun.

Marlana: And thank you for sticking through all our little loops and

Rob: and well, that's honestly that's just a me thing. Like the most random things will happen to me and the most random times, and I just, I've just learned to kind of deal with it. You know, go on, I was actually doing a training with like 23 people. On the middle of it, I just like froze. And it's like, freaking out like, has like low. I had a big freak-out moment. And I was like dialed in from my phone, I was like, hey, and I'm supposed to be leading this right now, having aside issues, what I want you to do is this, and I had them go around introducing each other, to give myself 10 minutes. So, I have my phone on and I'm troubleshooting and ended up working out like, I just did, you know, you just got to take that step back and take that deep breath. So, I'm used to it. I was kind of laughing love about it because you know what it always makes for a great story. And if you want to get good at creating your value, and you don't know what to talk about just tough personal stories, because we'll have some great ones soon have a good story share about the lessons learned can't go wrong. It's great content.

Marlana: It's true. Thank you so much for being here. Rob.

Rob: You bet! Thank you so much.